COMPILER DESIGN (KCS-502)

UNIT-1 (Lecture-2)
A compiler can broadly be divided into two phases based on the way they compile.

Analysis Phase

Known as the front-end of the compiler, the analysis phase of the compiler reads the source
program, divides it into core parts and then checks for lexical, grammar and syntax errors.The
analysis phase generates an intermediate representation of the source program and symbol table,
which should be fed to the Synthesis phase as input.

Synthesis Phase

Known as the back-end of the compiler, the synthesis phase generates the target program with
the help of intermediate source code representation and symbol table.

Passes & Phases of Compiler

A compiler can have many phases and passes.
• Pass : A pass refers to the traversal of a compiler through the entire program.
• Phase : A phase of a compiler is a distinguishable stage, which takes input from the
previous stage, processes and yields output that can be used as input for the next stage.
A pass can have more than one phase.
The compilation process is a sequence of various phases. Each phase takes input from its
previous stage, has its own representation of source program, and feeds its output to the next
phase of the compiler. Let us understand the phases of a compiler.

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 COMPILER DESIGN (KCS-502)

• Lexical Analysis
The first phase of scanner works as a text scanner. This phase scans the source code as a
stream of characters and converts it into meaningful lexemes. Lexical analyzer represents
these lexemes in the form of tokens as:
<token-name, attribute-value>

• Syntax Analysis
The next phase is called the syntax analysis or parsing. It takes the token produced by
lexical analysis as input and generates a parse tree (or syntax tree). In this phase, token
arrangements are checked against the source code grammar, i.e. the parser checks if the
expression made by the tokens is syntactically correct.
• Semantic Analysis
Semantic analysis checks whether the parse tree constructed follows the rules of
language. For example, assignment of values is between compatible data types, and
adding string to an integer. Also, the semantic analyzer keeps track of identifiers, their
types and expressions; whether identifiers are declared before use or not etc. The
semantic analyzer produces an annotated syntax tree as an output.
• Intermediate Code Generation
After semantic analysis the compiler generates an intermediate code of the source code
for the target machine. It represents a program for some abstract machine. It is in
between the high-level language and the machine language. This intermediate code
should be generated in such a way that it makes it easier to be translated into the target
machine code.
• Code Optimization
The next phase does code optimization of the intermediate code. Optimization can be
assumed as something that removes unnecessary code lines, and arranges the sequence of
statements in order to speed up the program execution without wasting resources (CPU,
memory).
• Code Generation
In this phase, the code generator takes the optimized representation of the intermediate
code and maps it to the target machine language. The code generator translates the
intermediate code into a sequence of (generally) re-locatable machine code. Sequence of
instructions of machine code performs the task as the intermediate code would do.
• Symbol Table
It is a data-structure maintained throughout all the phases of a compiler. All the
identifier's names along with their types are stored here. The symbol table makes it easier
for the compiler to quickly search the identifier record and retrieve it. The symbol table
is also used for scope management.

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